Curt Cloninger is an artist, writer, and Assistant Professor of New Media at the University of North Carolina Asheville (US). His art undermines language as a system of meaning in order to reveal it as an embodied force in the world. By layering, restructuring, hashing, eroding, exhausting, and (dis)splaying language, he causes language to perform itself until its "meaning" has less to do with what it denotes and more to do with how it behaves. His work has been featured in the New York Times and at festivals and galleries from Korea to Brazil. Exhibition venues include Digital Art Museum [DAM] Berlin, L'Instituto de México à Paris, Living Arts of Tulsa, and The Art Gallery of Knoxville.

Cloninger has written on a wide range of topics, including new media and internet art, installation and performance art, experimental graphic design, popular music, network culture, and continental philosophy. His articles have appeared in Intelligent Agent, Mute, Paste, Tekka, Rhizome Digest, A List Apart, and on ABC World News. He is also the author of seven books, most recently "Fresher Styles for Web Designers" (New Riders). He maintains lab404.com, playdamage.org , and deepyoung.org in hopes of facilitating a more lively remote dialogue with the Sundry Contagions of Wonder.

river sets tires and humans horizontal. what was moving you forward is now spinning you round. the river has most of the locutionary agency now.

so... with the river taking care of space, humans can focus less on space and more on time. might there be a way to derive/drift through time, attracted to certain memories and repulsed by others? (Can't we already do this without drifting on a river? how does a river help?)

BERGSON on matter/memory >> memory not stored any "where." we have total recall. present tense matter acts as a filter. (the kitten experiment >> bodies in space give meaning to vision). Dreaming: everything comes up and connects, because there is no matter filter.

so on a river, there are fewer things to demand our immediate attention. More like dreaming.

--------------------A bit about the artificiality of the nature/culture divide:Traffic sounds, the smell of sourwood. the river is a way to experience western north carolina that is not exclusively "rural" or "urban," "natural" or "manmade." the idea of nature apart from humans is a manmade idea from romanticism. humans are always a part of nature, and the things we build are "natural." (maybe not ethically beneficial or sustainable, but not merely because they are "un-natural.")--------------------

actualizing the virtual. WHITEHEAD's process of ingression. an egyptian pyramid as a particularly long and related series of micro-events (bergson would say a single enduring event) rather than a discrete object. everything (and humans) constantly becoming.

What agency do we have to navigate/drift through memories? PROUST suggests not a lot. The sound of a spoon on a plate throws him backwards in time, the taste of a madeleine cake. involuntary experiences. So maybe this drift is just a futile experiment.

Anyway, some suggestions... 1) passively drift as much as possible (although you will have to purposefully navigate some). [Don't fear waves/troubled waters >> that's the riverbed dropping in steps. river's so high now, it's well over most rocks.]2) Don't be bothered by the mix of man-made/natural. try to enjoy it for what it is -- our world, right now.3) don't wear a watch, don't worry about winning/losing.4) enjoy time with friends, but let yourself go solo for at least a while.5) be attentive to your own memories. don't strain (drifting is not forcing), but maybe something will arise, having been primed but unbidden.

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announce about bridge landmarks and Bywater Bar sign. Bywater is closed. beer at Wedge.share your email, get people to send you >>1) their name2) how much time they felt like they spent3) how much time they actually spent (discovered once they got out)4) any past memories, thoughts, critiques, or anything else they want to share.